The Anomaly(42)

“Kind of makes sense,” Ken said. “And I’d credit Romans with knowing how to build that pool. Smelting and metalworking techniques for those spheres, too.”

“They’re not the only group rumored to have gotten here before Columbus,” I told Gemma. “The Vikings, of course. Irish monks—with alleged examples of ogham script found here and there. Maybe the Egyptians, or Phoenicians or Minoans, too. I’d call those long shots, but the Romans? Maybe. You’ve seen what we’re dealing with. The Romans are the best I’ve got.”

“But the writing we’ve seen isn’t Latin.”

“That is, I’ll confess, a disappointing hole in my hypothesis. Though, wait.”

I got up and walked over to the passage with the pool. Ken came with me. “What?”

I pointed at the three letters Gemma had found. “They could be Roman, I guess?”

Ken shook his head. “Nothing else we’ve seen here presents like their writing. And look.” He pointed just to the right of the N or M. “Little nick there, like someone was about to do another letter and didn’t have time to finish. It’s just ‘Dominic,’ mate, or ‘Donald’ or something. Like I said—just one of the previous bunch who was here, leaving a mark.”

“Yeah, you’re probably right.”

“How long has it been?”

This last was from Molly, who’d been sitting quietly at the edge of the group, arms looped around her knees, looking toward the main passage. Listening, but not participating.

She’d been sitting exactly like this when we got back from finding the pool. While we’d been in the passage she had divided all of our resources—the remaining sandwiches, water bottles, a couple of tiny bags of peanuts, and a handful of granola bars—into neat piles. Spare batteries for the flashlights and Pierre’s camera were in another.

None of the piles was as large as I would have liked.

Molly had efficiently bandaged Gemma’s arm with gauze from her kit, then gone back to sitting. She listened while we told her what we’d found, but made no comment. She seemed calm. Too calm, I thought, but then I realized she was simply waiting. She was done being here. She had no further interest in this place or anything we might discover about it. She wanted out.

“Four hours,” I said. “A little more.”

Molly glanced at me, and then went back to looking down the main passageway.



A while later Pierre came back and told me he’d found something different. I asked Ken if he wanted to come see but he said no, though to shout for him right away if it turned out to be a fully stocked bar or a lap-dancing club.

I followed Pierre down the passage that ran out from the three o’clock position in the room.

“How’re you holding up?” I asked.

As soon as the question was out of my mouth it seemed a strange one. Unguarded, and unlikely to be helpful. It could only remind someone of our situation.

He shrugged, however. “Good. I mean, I’m totally ready to be somewhere else, but you know, it’s all still awesome.”

“Do you think Molly’s okay?”

“Oh yeah. She’s just—I think she gets kinda claustrophobic in the dark. Plus that girl is half-woman, half-smartphone. She’s had no signal for two days. That’s got to be driving her nuts, right? Her Facebook is going to explode.”

I laughed. “How are you doing for camera batteries?”

“Okay. But I’m running low on disk space. That’s why I stopped shooting everything in sight. I figure you and Ken can tell me what you want me to pick up before we leave, and I’ll do it then. Worst case, I can trim some of what we already have, though I don’t want to lose much. I don’t expect I’ll get to film something like this again.”

After fifty yards it was evident that this tunnel was different, in that it bent markedly to the left—deeper into the rock—rather than heading out straight from the main room. I observed this.

“Yeah,” Pierre said, stopping and pointing up the passage. “Plus it’s longer. Though it still ends in a wall. This is what I wanted to show you, though.”

He gestured through a doorway, and I went into the room beyond. “Yi,” I said, immediately.

“Right.”

The odor was insidious rather than strong, dry and old—but noticeably more powerful than the general smell of dust and charcoal that hung around the rest of the tunnels. My initial reaction was due to the fact that it was implacably unpleasant, even in small doses—like the smell that lingers around the corner of a building near rat traps.

The room was big, too. I couldn’t see how big, because after walking ten feet—the smell getting a little more forceful with each step—I retreated to the doorway.

“What’s causing that odor?” Pierre asked.

“No idea,” I said. “But Kincaid did mention a room they’d found that smelled bad. He described it as ‘snaky,’ I think. I don’t know what snakes smell like.”

And then we heard the sound of shouting.

Sudden, urgent—and coming from the main room.





Chapter

25



Pierre and I ran in to find the central space deserted. This was extremely disconcerting until we heard voices from the main passage. By the time we got into it, Ken, Molly, and Gemma were together down at the end, up against the stone ball.